The Digital Marketing Team at Macmillan clear up the mystery behind publishing a book today!

This is a follow up to my post, How Books Were Made Before Magic Digital Fairies Existed! The folks at Macmillan Publishing created a video of their own on how the process works today. You can file this under “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.” This was posted on January 12, 2009, well after the [...]

And the winner of the Kindle2 is….

The entries have been counted, sorted, filed, and dumped into a space age tumbling machine to mix them up all professional like, and we have a winner. To find out who the lucky so and so is all you have to do is watch the video below. Thanks to everyone who participated. [...]

How Books Were Made Before Magic Digital Fairies Existed!

Making a book today is not easy.  It takes a lot of time, people, fancy-schmancy machines, one or two magic digital fairies, ink, and glue to make a book.  There will be a day when all we will need is the magic digital fairies, but that day is at least a week away, maybe two.  [...]

Do not call me ma’am!

I am not a woman.  This picture taken of me during my enormous beardy phase I think illustrates that point beautifully.  I feel it necessary to proclaim my manhood with great verve because throughout my adult life I have been “Ma’am’d” dozens upon dozens of times.  Ma’am’d as in people, complete strangers, from all walks [...]

Secretary of College Football, Orin Hatch

Yippee! As frequent visitors to this blog my recall (and I know both of you), I cast my vote for Obama based on one very important issue. He was in favor of a playoff system in college football. Stupid? Yes, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Granted, he’s had [...]

Lost Days – Post 5

This is the 5th installment of the book I am currently writing. It is Sci-Fi/Adventure for young adult. It is not part of the Oz Chronicle series. The final version of the book will most likely look a bit different than what you read here, but I thought you might like to see a work [...]

Shopping Cart Crimes!

 

 
At the risk of getting all grumpy old man on you, put the shopping carts in the designated shopping cart return area, people.  A bevy of badness can occur when you brazenly and rudely just leave your shopping cart in the middle of a grocery or department store parking lot. For one thing, it’s a [...]

Where do you get your story ideas? I finally have an answer.

When a person in a social situation discovers you are a writer of fiction, they inevitably ask, “Where do you get your story ideas?” I never have a great answer because a lot times the story just comes out of nowhere. There’s no real event or marker that you can identify as the place where [...]

Bragging About My Unexceptional Life

I’m a fan of Twitter, but I love this video making fun of it.  It is a completely weird phenomenon, and I don’t pretend to understand it.  I talk to people all the time who don’t understand why anyone would “Tweet,” or even use the word “Tweet” as an adult, and sometimes I do feel [...]

More on Being a Bad Guy in 2009

In January I announced that I’m going to be bad this year thanks to Jeremy Robison. Jeremy is the author of the upcoming book, Pulse, the first in his Chess Team series (Publisher: Thomas Dunne). He’s named his evil geneticist Richard Ridley (Richard is my real life name. R.W. is my author’s name). I [...]